


Kale's Camping Trip

by Acemindbreaker



Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst, Camping, Driving, Foster Care, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Psychic Bond, Supernatural Elements, Teenagers, Theft, Underaged Driving, background vampires, magophage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-29
Updated: 2018-10-29
Packaged: 2019-08-09 14:32:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16451684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Acemindbreaker/pseuds/Acemindbreaker
Summary: For as long as she can remember, Kale has heard a voice in her head. He helped her figure out how to escape her abusive home, and he's been the one constant in her life as she's bounced from foster home to foster home. He's helped her to hunt to feed her supernatural hunger, and to learn to use her powers effectively. And he's taught her to lie, deceive and manipulate.But on Kale's very first camping trip, the voice suddenly falls silent.Written for the September/October Whump Prompt Challenge, although it ended up not having a lot of whump in it, sorry.https://whump-prompt-challenge.tumblr.com/post/177637798006/wpc18-september-prompts





	Kale's Camping Trip

**Author's Note:**

> This is a one-shot set in the continuity of one of my unpublished WIPs. The main story focuses on Trevor, another of the voice's children, and Kale is a secondary character.

It just had to happen during her first ever camping trip.

Kale had always wanted to go on a camping trip. But between changes in foster homes, foster parents not having the time or the money, and the voice's worries about how she'd hunt on a trip, here she was, 13 and going on her first ever trip. Her new foster home had apparently promised their bio kids a camping trip this summer, before they knew she'd be coming, and come hell or high water, they weren't canceling. Not that she wanted them to cancel, even if the voice was worried about her.

 

 

Kale hunted down three vampires the night before they left, draining them all to make sure she was absolutely stuffed. The day of the trip, she went to a magic shop and shoplifted a resurrection charm that felt like it had real magic in it. It seemed like a waste to get something so cool and just eat it, but it was the strongest-feeling thing she could slip into her pocket and leave with.

Even so, she could tell the voice was worried. 

But as it turned out, she wasn't the one they needed to worry about.

 

It was three days into her camping trip. Kale no longer felt overstuffed by the vampires, but she wasn't exactly hungry, yet, either. The voice, meanwhile, actually seemed to be calming down a bit.

And Kale was having the time of her life. The awkwardness of being in a new foster home was a lot easier to deal with when they were in a new environment, too. And she'd gotten to try so many new things—pitching a tent, hiking, kayaking, hunting animals for once instead of monsters, cooking over an open fire—camping was every bit as fun as she'd dreamed it would be.

That is, until one evening, as they were making s'mores and telling ghost stories, when the voice suddenly spoke. 

Kale exclaimed. Silence. More silence. 

As she kept yelling in her mind, trying to get a response, Kale was getting more and more anxious. She could not lose the voice. He was her one constant in life, more of a parent to her than her biological parents or any of her foster parents.

“Are you OK, Kristin?” Her foster mother asked.

“It's Kale. I don't go by Kristin.” She replied shakily, putting a hand to her temple and using her power to dampen her emotions. “I'm fine. Just tired. I think I'll go to bed.”

“OK, Kale.” The woman smiled at her. “Just remember—if you need to talk to someone, I'm here.”

Kale nodded and headed to her tent. Fat chance. What would she say? 'The voice in my head has gone silent, I think something bad happened to him?' She'd told people about the voice before, but never adults—she told other foster kids, usually because she sensed they had powers, too. If only one of them was here!

She thought of her cellphone, wishing she hadn't forgotten her charger in all the chaos of packing for the trip. She hadn't been worried about it going dead, figuring she'd be busy enough with the camping, but now? It would really help to have someone to talk to, someone who got what the voice meant to her.

Kale could feel the emotion dampening she'd done wearing off, her panic and desperation coming back full force, and she let it. It wasn't good to suppress her emotions too much. It could make her sick, and besides, emotions kept you in touch with yourself. She sat on her sleeping bag and hugged herself, feeling tears start to well up. She let herself start to cry, silently, her vision blurring as she searched through her pack for her water bottle. She knew from experience that crying without replacing the fluids would give her a headache.

Even with the bottle, by the time she'd cried herself out, her head was aching a little. Feeling numb and drained, she headed to the bathroom—luckily their campsite had plumbing, even if it was old and rickety—to pee and brush her teeth, ignoring her foster family. She returned to her tent and fell asleep.

 

The next morning, she awoke before anyone else and instinctively called out to the voice. When she didn't get the usual reply, she remembered what had happened last night, and felt sick.

OK. She'd let herself cry, now it was time to plan. She took a couple deep breaths, just to get herself feeling less shaky, and thought about it. He'd said enemies had caught up to him. Kale wasn't sure what, exactly, the voice was, but she knew he was a person who existed beyond just talking in her head. He'd mentioned trying to live in this world, and feeling out of place. He was a lot older than an ordinary human—he'd told her stories about growing up in an ancient empire, and then being attacked by rebels and petrified for a very long time.

What if the same thing had happened again? He'd mentioned some people freeing him from his petrification by accident, so presumably Kale should be able to free him again, if she found him. Especially since she could usually destroy magic spells by feeding on them. If she had time to react, magic in general didn't stand a chance against her. The only time magic hurt her was when she was taken by surprise—as the voice must have been.

But how would she find him? He'd never said where he lived, refusing to answer if asked. He said it was safer for her if there was no way for anyone to connect them, so she shouldn't seek him out. Not that she planned to listen, not when he might be petrified again, aware but unable to move, going insane from lack of stimulation.

Well, her best bet would probably be to start with the supernatural rumor mill. She'd often hung out with vampires, getting information from them and gaining their trust before draining them, and she'd heard the rumors of 'the duster', a slayer who could turn vampires into dust with only a touch, and left a dead spot with no magic when they killed. She was a duster, obviously, but she'd heard of duster kills that weren't hers. It was reasonable to assume that the voice was similar to her, since he knew a lot about what she could do—he'd taught her, after all. So those kills were probably his, even if he'd refused to confirm or deny it when she'd asked.

Perhaps they'd have rumors about the duster being defeated. At the very least, she might be able to figure out where and when he'd last killed, and potentially guess at his location. But in order to find out, she'd need to get back to civilization. How?

She could feign illness. But she didn’t know how they’d react. They could tell her to tough it out, or they could be concerned enough to take her to the hospital or start paying constant attention to look after her. Either option would be bad.

She could steal their car. It would get her in big trouble—she definitely wouldn’t be able to come back to this home after that—but she wasn’t sure she cared about that. Besides, simply running away could do that, too, and there were always more homes.

The bigger risk would be getting caught with the car. She knew how to drive, mostly, because she’d stolen cars before. But she didn’t look nearly old enough—she was only 13 and she looked it, even if her maturity was beyond her age. Any police who saw her would immediately know that she didn’t have a license.

She could probably walk to the highway and hitchhike. That could potentially be extremely dangerous, since her powers only worked on vampires—not human creeps who want to hurt a teenager hitching a ride. She did have the resurrection charm, she hadn’t drained it yet, but it was meant for humans, and she didn’t know if it would work on her. And besides, she had more to fear than just death. Her biological father had proved that. She took a deep breath and pushed away the thought of hands on her body…

Stealing their car was probably the best option. But she’d have to stick to low-traffic roads and ditch it as soon as she got to civilization. And she’d need money—better steal some of that, too.

 

She did her best to act normal for the rest of the day, chatting with her foster family. Mid-afternoon, when none of them were paying attention, she got into the foster father's backpack and took $100 and the car keys. And then it was back to acting normal, hoping none of them noticed the stuff missing.

It used to be so easy. When she was little, no one expected her to know how to steal stuff, and they'd write her off as a suspect without thinking. But now, Kale knew that if they found anything missing, the new teenage foster charge would naturally be the first suspect. Kale was too big to get away with stuff because of the presumption of childhood innocence, and too little to pass for adult to get away with doing adult things. She found it frustrating.

Luckily, though, he never checked his backpack, and none of them noticed anything off about how she was acting. The rest of the day passed without event.

Kale didn't know if it was part of her powers, or just a quirk of hers, but she could usually choose roughly what time she woke up. And this time, when she went to bed, she wanted to wake up at 1 am.

 

It was dark when she awoke. Kale was used to the city, where the light never completely went away, but this was a campsite, and there was no light. She could hear animal sounds she couldn't identify, and for a moment, some instinct made her want to go back inside her tent to hide. But she couldn't give up, not like this. She needed the voice back.

So she took a couple deep breaths, shifted the backpack on her back, and pictured the campsite, moving slowly and carefully. When she found the car, she felt her way to the driver's side door, unlocked it, and opened the door. The light in the car was both a shock and a relief, and she climbed in, then started the car.

When she got to the highway, she could tell her timing had paid off. The highway was deserted. She just had to hope it would stay that way long enough for her to get to town and ditch the car.


End file.
